Smartphones

Will Apple unveil the next iPhone at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week? Tech punditry seems to think the answer to that question is a big, fat “No,” and it’s probably right—Apple generally uses the show to announce new versions of its iOS and Mac OS X platforms, not hardware. But no doubt about it: The next iPhone is coming this year. The galaxy of websites and blogs that routinely feed the Apple rumor-mill seem to agree on one… continue…

If research firm IDC is correct, 2014 could become the year of the “phablet.” IDC defines phablets as smartphones with screens exceeding 5.5 inches, a category that encompasses a growing number of devices. Samsung in particular has led the phablet charge, seeing it as a competitive differentiator from Apple, which has (so far) resolved to keep the iPhone’s screen at no more than four inches diagonal. Click here to find app developer jobs. IDC believes phablets’ share of the smartphone… continue…

Google Android continues to dominate the smartphone space, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. For the first three months of 2014, the research firm found that Android held a comfortable lead in nearly all of its survey countries, including the EU, Australia, China, the United States, and Great Britain. Despite that advantage, however, Apple still managed to make inroads in a number of countries, particularly Japan. Click here to find mobile developer jobs. In the U.S., for example,… continue…

Google’s Project Ara wants to take the smartphone back to basics—literally. With Project Ara, the smartphone is modular: The owner can swap out everything from the battery and screen to the speakers and cameras. The device’s endoskeleton holds those modules in place with magnets, meaning those swaps can take place without the need for a mini-screwdriver or other tools. In theory, you could duck into a store, purchase a replacement module for a camera or battery, and pop it into… continue…

If rumors (and The Wall Street Journal) prove correct, Amazon will release a smartphone near the end of 2014. Those rumors have percolated for quite some time; in early 2013, for example, Amazon hired a former manager of Microsoft’s Windows Phone developer experience to work on “something secret,” which sparked a flurry of publications proclaiming that such a device was in the works. Click here to find mobile development jobs. Amazon already has a handful of branded devices on the… continue…

A remote-controlled quadcopter named “Snoopy” prowled the streets of London in late March, collecting confidential data from the smartphones of passersby at the rate of about 150 victims per hour. Included in the haul were usernames and passwords to PayPal, Amazon, Yahoo and other sites that represent concentration points for the financial and identity-management data of millions of users. Click here to find mobile security jobs. Snoopy is the cutting edge of mobile-security technology, but not in the way most… continue…

Samsung expanded the horizons of wearable computers this month with a trio of fitness-oriented smartwatches running two different operating systems—neither of which is Android. Two of the three, the Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Neo 2, run the open(ish)-source, Linux-based Tizen operating system. The other, a fitness tracker named the Samsung Gear Fit, uses a customized version of the Real Time Operating System (RTOS), a lightweight OS designed to run so quickly and use so little computing power it can… continue…